


a new start and a new day

by shroom_system



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Memory Loss, Post-Canon, Pre-Game Personalities (New Dangan Ronpa V3), YES THIS IS THE TO COPE REMAKE
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-03
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:00:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27865753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shroom_system/pseuds/shroom_system
Summary: when you die, you are left to the endless pit. you fall forever and ever. and you are left there.but fate has a different path for miss shirogane, and a hand reaches into the pit, and amongst the darkness it almost appears to glow. a hand offers her a second chance, and she takes it, for better or for worse.
Relationships: Akamatsu Kaede/Shirogane Tsumugi
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	1. rebirth.

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [To Cope](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24980218) by [shroom_system](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shroom_system/pseuds/shroom_system). 



a thought floated in an endless nothing.

is it truly nothing if there is a thought, if just a meagre memory of a person who once lived? 

a bittersweet memory floated in the abyss of nothing and yet everything. 

the bittersweet memory of tsumugi shirogane. 

in a way, she always knew this was coming. in a way, she understood when she signed that contract to be the mastermind, she was signing her own death warrant. 

she was nothing. no body. no mind. just an ugly, tarnished memory. a memory battered and bruised and cast into a ditch to rot. a memory that just wanted to be forgotten. 

is it better to be forgotten or hated for all eternity?

she didn’t quite know. 

still, tsumugi lay in the great void where everything goes to lie and yet you are all alone. 

the dead are resigned to sleeping eternally in the void, the dead are imprisoned to memory, and they live only in the dreams of those who remember them, whether fondly or foully. 

the dead lie there forever. the dead do not escape. the dead are simply just there. they have nothing to win and everything to lose from living. 

but tsumugi shirogane was not dead. and so she awoke from this great eternal slumber. she awoke. 

and she awoke in a hospital bed. the first thing she noticed was that smell that always seemed linger in hospitals, the stark clean smell of bleach barely hiding sickness. the second thing she noticed was the pure whiteness of the room. the walls were whitewashed, the floor tiles were white, the beds and the sheets were white. the room was so very monochrome, she stuck out like a sore thumb. 

she sat up and looked around the room. 14 other uniform beds surrounded the room in a ring, and each had a strange contraption above them, a sort of mask? she checked above her bed, and realised there was one there too. the uniformity of the room was almost unsettling. 

pulling herself up on unsteady legs, tsumugi walked out of the room. 

and the world spun. 

a few shaky breaths, and she steadied herself. she didn’t really know what would happen next. but god, the only future she saw was a hated one. 

and for a second, she wished to be in that pit, drowning forever. drowning in her own death. and she wished to escape her fate, to be hated, to be made into a villainous figure. and she guessed it was her own fault. but still, being a side character was worse than being hated. 

if she was hated, she was hated. and that was it. 

she wandered aimlessly, too stubborn to find someone to ask directions, until she found a door. it was painted a pretty green, with a silver plaque labelled ‘V3 participatent quarters’. how handy. 

the door led to more corridors. great. 

more corridors led to doors. labelled doors. thank god for labels. 

she passed a door labelled rantaro amami although she didn’t quite know what that was. 

she passed many doors. all labelled with little names she didn’t know. kaede akamatsu, ryoma hoshi and kirumi tojo all followed rantaro amami. 

she came to the fifteenth door and finally saw a name she knew. it was her own, tsumugi shirogane. 

there were four more doors. 

maki harukawa, himiko yumeno and a name she knew. 

a name she knew quite well.

shuichi saihara. a boy she knew from school. her best friend, actually.

her only friend. 

so he’d gotten in too, huh? his character was super cool, she’d helped him draft his audition and it was no surprise his character was danganronpa worthy. 

there was one last door, labelled ‘common room’. so naturally, she went in there. 

and she was met with a crowd of 13 strangers. they stared at her? they... 

they turned their backs to her. 

what was going on? 

what was going on here? 

she... she hadn’t dont anything? why were they ignoring her? did they know her from someone? there’d been rumours about her at school, but never enough to make people hate her? usually it was just a simple matter of being yelled at from across the hall and having to ignore people. 

she looked around. who were these people? they all seemed to know each other, and they knew her too. she didn’t know any of their names, or faces, she’d never spoken to these people. 

she sat down on a big blue armchair. it was a comfy chair. soft. comforting. 

she looked around the room and spotted a familiar face. 

“hey! shuichi!”, she called him from across the room. 

but when he turned, something sunk in her stomach. this wasn’t her shuichi. this didn’t feel right. this didn’t feel right at all.

still, shuichi walked over, and sat by her and she thought maybe for a moment her shuichi was still there. 

he asked her if she was okay, and that she looked kind of spaced out. she nodded and started, “hey, shuichi, uh-“ tsumugi hesitated, and then continued,

“who are all these people?”.

shuichi appeared stunned, and then found his tongue, “you don’t know?” he scrutinised her face, as she sat there, blankly, and then spoke, “you aren’t lying either. holy shit, you don’t know.”. and she replied, “shu, why do they hate me? theyve been acting like they hate me.”. and shuichi didn’t say a word. 

“shuichi, what’s wrong?”

silence.

“did i do something?” 

silence. 

“shuichi, you aren’t ignoring me are you?”

silence. 

“shuichi, please answer me.”

silence. 

and she suddenly found a building rage inside her and yelled, startling herself,

“what’s going on here?”. 

and this time the silence was directed at her. many faces turned towards her. and a pretty girl, a blonde girl, the type you’d expect to have a boyfriend and a lot of friends spoke up. “tsumugi, what do you mean?”. 

“i mean i don’t know anyone here and i don’t understand why you all hate me and why shuichi, the only person i know here and my literal only friend, is ignoring me.” 

shuichi finally spoke, “i’m your friend?” 

“of course you are, we’ve been friends since middle school, we used t-“ and she stopped dead, realising a scary truth.

“you don’t remember me either, do you?”


	2. familiarity.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which tsumugi settles back into her life, and then it is all shook up again.

a silence rang through the room. 

was silence this deafening before?

was silence always so scary?

tsumugi couldn’t tell you. she couldn’t tell you much at all.

shuichi gave her a little shake of his head. and she was all alone. in a room full of strangers who hated her, or someone she had once been. in a room of faces unfamiliar and the one familiar didn’t know her.

he wasn’t the same shuichi she knew. they had the same face. they had the same eyes, dull and a yellowish green, like a lamplight in the dark. they had the same nose, crooked and telling the tale of a broken nose, and she knew it had been broken by falling out of the old tall oak tree in her garden. they had the same hair, unruly, and black-blue, lying half over his face. they had the same face, the same mannerisms, the same anxious sideways glance, the same body, the same name, the same heart, the same lungs, the same brain. 

but they were not the same. 

and tsumugi was not quite sure she was the same tsumugi she once knew. she did not know what she had done, her last memories were foggy, but she was certain she had just gotten accepted by-

by danganronpa. 

her memories had been wiped, she’d become the Cosplayer, she was the mastermind, she was- 

nothing. 

she didn’t know what she had done.

nor who the Cosplayer was.

what kind of life they had led. what kind of memories they had. what kind of person were they. 

all she knew was she was the mastermind. and she’d done something so bad, it'd made everyone hate her. 

she knew nothing about who she had once been.

she knew who she was now. 

she was a simple plain person. she was someone who lived only for danganronpa. she was someone who’d quite not become everything she needed to yet. 

and she existed. she existed and she was here and she didn’t know what she was doing but she was here, god damnit! 

no one knew her now though. 

she didn’t know her parents, she didn’t know anyone but shuichi. 

shuichi, who had been her only friend. 

shuichi, who had stood up for her. 

shuichi, who watched danganronpa with her.

shuichi, who cried when he watched executions.

shuichi, who cried when he saw blackeneds break down.

shuichi, who’d cared about her when she hadn’t cared for herself. 

shuichi. 

who no longer knew her. no longer knew who he was. 

shuichi.

who was no longer himself.

or maybe he was himself? and maybe the shuichi she knew was not the true shuichi?

she didn’t know.

she didn’t know much at all.

no one spoke to her, as she sat in that big blue armchair. they spoke to each other, and occasionally she tuned into their conversations. small talk, talk of the Game, talk of nothing, talk of everything. talk. 

what was she doing here? she had no place here, no place among these people, these good people.

she left the room, and no one questioned her. and no one cared. 

and she did not care about them. 

she simply left.

through doors and corridors and she collected a set of keys from her past life, and she read the little address on it and she caught a taxi to that address. 

a small suburban house. a small suburban house she lived in. she turned the key. she opened the door. and she breathed in. and it smelt like home. it was familiar.

she walked like a ghost in her own house. the shelves of her living room were lined with figures, little figures she knew. her sofa was a fabric sofa, and a soft light blue blanket was thrown over one of the arms. her carpet was grey and soft. her kitchen was quaint and clean, and her kettle still half full. there was her room upstairs, painted a soft sky blue (was that her favourite colour?), with her bed, a big soft bed, with many pillows and blankets, one that felt like paradise to sink into after a long day.

there was another room, the spare room. it was painted a pastel yellow. and it felt a little alien. she shut the door and refused to think of the room. 

and she walked away, she walked into her room. she stood in front of the mirror and she looked at the person she saw. 

she saw a tall girl, a tall girl with long blue hair. she saw a tall blue-haired girl, dressed simply. she saw a tall girl with bags under her eyes, and glasses hiding those eyes. she saw a tall girl, with bad posture and with grey eyes and blue hair and glasses. 

she braided her hair into two braids, the motion familiar to her, instinctive. she put on a button up and a sweater and a pleated skirt. and she saw herself in that mirror. 

she left the house for a little fresh air. for a walk. she wandered her familiar neighbourhood, she saw familiar faces, people she knew vaguely, she saw familiar houses and felt a familiar october wind blow her braids back. 

it was all familiar to her. comforting. 

she knew this area and she knew it would never change.

she was about halfway round her usual walk pattern when she noticed how little had changed since she was last here. she didn’t quite know how long it had been since she was last here but it was comforting to know something had stayed the same. 

in her little neighbourhood, nothing would change, and she was happy to know that. she neared the end of the walk and smiled. she was home. 

tsumugi was only a few houses from her own house, and she must’ve gotten distracted by something or another because next thing she knew, she had smacked straight into another girl.

she scrambled to her feet and stuttered out, “ah shit, sorry!”. but looking up into the girl she’d ran into.

there, was the blonde hair, purple eyes and kind face of the girl from earlier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOO!! chapter 2 actually happened uwu


End file.
